Building teams can collaborate without complex multiparty contracts, say IPD skeptics More than five years into a collaborative building-production movement called integrated project delivery, warnings abound: Don’t try this with strangers. New risks replace old ones. Beware of waivers of claims. Get ready to open your books. Expect lengthy contract negotiations. Prepare to share any profits. Understand that multiparty contracts have not been tested in court. The advice is not just from lawyers and skeptics. Even IPD zealots admit IPD may change the designers’ standard of care. They acknowledge there are no insurance products covering multiparty contracts. They caution that

Team uses collaboration and digital tools to produce architect's most expansive draped facade ...restart work and take the building to its original planned height, thanks to a historic project-labor agreement between the Building Trades Employers’ Association of New York and the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York. In it, several unions agreed to one-year wage freezes and benefit cuts while also agreeing to no strikes or work stoppages. In return, contractors cut wages and benefits for management and reduced their own profit margins. Project costs were reduced by 16% to 21%. FCRC declines to provide too many

Team uses collaboration and digital tools to produce architect's most expansive draped facade ...began that fall. Panel installation started about a year ago and is scheduled to be topped out in September. “There is no appreciable cost premium for the ‘premium’ curtain wall,” says Rechichi. In the end, of 10,911 rectangular panels for 427,734 sq ft of the eight-sided tower, there are only 1,888 repetitive units. There are 1,568 shaped column-cover units, 2,178 flat column-cover units and 5,177 shaped spandrel units with glass. The 9-ft, 10-in.-tall units vary 3.5 ft to 7.5 ft in width. All the glass is flat.

Team uses collaboration and digital tools to produce architect's most expansive draped facade A 70-story, folded, creased and curved stainless-steel curtain wall on an 867-ft-tall apartment building has been called “Gehry only on the outside,” as if the building is a fake Frank. It’s true that, when it opens next year, New York City’s tallest residential tower won’t be an internationally acclaimed cultural icon, as is the architect’s now-12-year-old Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain. The 76-story high-rise is not as colorful, whimsical and structurally innovative as the nearly decade-old Experience Music Project rock ’n’ roll museum in Seattle. The new

Damage from landslides is common in Haiti. In Port-au-Prince, there is widespread destruction of nonductile concrete structures. Many rubble or unreinforced masonry walls failed. The E-in-plan Presidential Palace in Port-au-Prince still has much of the first floor intact, with windows unbroken, but there is total collapse above the first floor. There is very light reinforcing evident in failed columns near the entry. At the port, there is a collapsed pier and cranes, and several buildings are under water. Extensive lateral spreading and liquefaction is evident. These and numerous other on-site observations on damage from Haiti’s magnitude 7 earthqauke are from

Photo: Eduardo Fierro, BFP Engineers Inc. Collapsed two-, or possibly three-story reinforced concretebuilding in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Related Links: Structural Engineers Survey Devastation Who Will Lead Recovery Effort in Haiti? Haiti Highlights California Quake Risks A/E/C Specialists and Others Rush to Help Haiti Architects Speak About Shoddy Construction Architecture Groups Mobilize to Help Haiti A preliminary damage assessment map for major buildings and infrastructure in Port-au-Prince is now available from the United Nations Institute for Training and Research's Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNITAR/UNOSAT). Sites marked as "No Visual Damage" may have major structural damage not identifiable in the imagery. Damage there

In an effort to accelerate the development of cost-effective, sustainable concrete, Masdar, the developer of the planned carbon and waste-neutral Masdar City in Abu Dhabi, is holding a concrete mix design competition. The first prize is $150,000, for a sustainable concrete production method. The second prize is $50,000 for the lowest-carbon- footprint concrete mix. This is the first of several competitions to help Masdar, an initiative of the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Co., achieve its goals for sustainability at Masdar City, says Omar. M. Waqfi, Masdar's specifications manager. "We are pushing and challenging people on all aspects [of sustainable development],

Photo © Richard Shields, courtesy Legacy Chicago The goal of the “decarbonization” plan is to improve the performance of buildings and infrastructure systems in the Chicago Loop. Related Links: CTBUH Names Tall Building Winner Smith + Gill's Masdar Headquarters A Chicago architecture firm is producing a holistic planning approach to reduce carbon emissions in dense urban cores. The fledgling urban planning effort, which Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture is developing for the 550-building Chicago Loop area, is a process that starts with a survey of existing buildings in a district to assess age, use, condition, energy consumption, and more.